The Hockey Life

PART EIGHTY: PARANOID
Patrick’s POV

The United Center was amazing place. The energy inside it when it was filled with fans was crazy, but I loved it. It got my adrenaline pumping before the first home game of the season against my hometown team began. Even with the recent events that had happened and the tension between some of us (mostly Dylan and I), I still felt great. There was something about home ice that always made me extremely focused and very happy to be a hockey player. It made me feel like we couldn’t lose, even more so than familiar ice outside of Chicago. This game was no different.
I swear the fans got louder and louder every year. Other than Stanley Cup Final games, the first home game of the year was always the most rowdy one, with everyone feeling hockey-deprived. The shouts were great to hear though, and so was the sight of everyone jumping to their feet when we scored. I was lucky enough to have them stand up for me in the second period, and it felt great.
Post game was pretty amazing, too. Not because of the interviews and the media, but because of Lena. She had been to Victoria’s Secret lately, and she modeled her new purchases under my jersey and a tight pair of jeans (not that they stayed on for long). I swear she had become way more interested in intimacy lately, and I couldn’t help but imagine how fantastic our honeymoon would be. I guess her height in interest affected me too, even at practice sometimes. Luckily, with all the gear I had to wear, nobody could tell. But Johnny knew, because I was dumb and I told him pretty much everything. I paid for it, too.
“You seemed a little distracted at practice today,” he said as we began to change back into normal clothes in the locker room one morning.
“Oh, shut up,” I replied, annoyed. He had found a comment to make almost every day.
“Hey, I’m just saying!” he laughed.
“Why’s Kaner distracted?” Brandon Saad asked, joining in on the conversation. Oh, great.
“He keeps forgetting he’s not a teenage boy so he daydreams about Lena when he should be focusing on hockey,” Tazer announced.
“I do not daydream!” I retorted, rolling my eyes at my teammates who were laughing at me.
“Whatever, Peeks. If lying makes you feel better, then go ahead and tell yourself that,” Shawzy joined in.
“Screw you guys,” I said, flipping them off with a smile on my face as I left the room. I saw Lena once I was out.
“What’s got you smiling?” she wondered.
“Nothing, the guys are just being idiots,” I told her.
“You say that every day.”
“Well, it’s what they do best. You think they’re professional hockey players, but they’re actually just professional idiots in skates,” I decided.

Dylan’s POV

I left the locker room after Patrick, trailing behind him and Lena as I headed to my car. I was so thankful that Coach Q didn’t put me on a line with him for games or in the same group for drills. I never had been before, but now I was honestly a little terrified of him. He wasn’t one to fight, but with me, it was a different story. He wasn’t going to let my mistake with Lena go. But as hard as it was to be around him at practice every day, it was worse when I ran into Lena. She wouldn’t talk to me. I had almost tried to confront her a couple times, but I could see in her eyes that she didn’t want anything to do with me, and that hurt so bad. I wanted to make things right, but I couldn’t. Obviously, nothing would ever be the same, but I was hopeful that I could at least get her to talk to me again, and forgive me for what I did. So far, things weren’t working out in my favor.
Usually, I had my ways to relieve my stress and to get my emotions out. I would stay after practice and get extra hockey in, or call my friends and ask them to hang out. If I was really desperate, I’d have a night out in a bar, but I knew that alcohol was a terrible thing to resort to. Hockey was my main focus lately, but not that day. Instead, I went shopping for a Halloween costume. I didn’t want to go to the party, but a few of my teammates had convinced me, so I gave in. I had finally decided that I was going to go and dammit, I was going to have a good time. I would just keep my distance when it came to Lena and Patrick, and hopefully no problems would arise.

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Lena’s POV

Finally, it was October 29, the day of the Halloween party at Sharpy’s place. I was so excited for a chance to get all dressed up and have fun, no worries. It was an hour before Patrick and I had to leave for the party, and I was working on his zombie makeup. We were already in our costumes, and it was time to complete our looks. I made his skin look grayish and dirty and I darkened his eyes with lots of black eye makeup. I gave him some fake wounds and fake blood around his black lips, and I even put some on his costume.
“How do I look?” Patrick asked before looking into the mirror to see himself. I was pretty proud of the finished product, so I hoped he would like it.
“Wow, I definitely look like a zombie…” he realized as he checked out his reflection. “But you think I’m a hot zombie, right?”
“Yeah, sure…” I said while shaking my head no. I was only messing with him, though. He might have looked undead, but he was pretty cute for a cannibal.
I did my makeup similarly after I was done with his, and I was just as happy with the results. We took a few pictures since we had time to spare after we finished getting ready, and once the hour had passed, we headed over to the Sharp household.
When we arrived, I was pleasantly surprised. There were decorations everywhere - cobwebs, bats, black cats, Jack-o-lanterns, the works. A ton of amazing looking food was out too, and everyone was dressed up in costumes. Tess and Jonathan hadn’t arrived yet, but I already was wondering if I’d have to push them back to second place for the best costumes. Sharpy and his wife were dressed up as chefs, and their daughters were dressed as lobsters. I had seen that group costume idea before, but it had never looked so cute!
Eventually Jonathan and Tess got there, and as I had predicted, the whole team got a kick out of the inflatable muscle shirt. He of all people didn’t need it, and he looked absolutely ridiculous with it on. A lot of people seemed to like the costumes Patrick and I were wearing as well, but they were extra impressed with the makeup I had done. Luckily, I was naturally pretty good at doing makeup, so Halloween was a perfect holiday for me.
The party ended up being a ton of fun. I did catch Dylan in a werewolf costume a few times, but he didn’t try to talk to me. It seemed like he had caught on that I wasn’t ready for the first awkward conversation. Of course, Patrick was by my side every time I saw him at the party, so he probably was a little concerned that he’d get pinned up against the wall again as well. But either way, I saw him smiling and laughing, and I was glad he wasn’t moping around.

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The next day, there was an away game, so it was a busy day full of traveling. The day after that was Halloween, and I was thankful that we got to come back home. The Hawks had the day off, so not even a practice got in the way of us having a perfect holiday.
Since we were too old for trick or treating, Patrick and I went shopping and got a ton of candy to pig out on: Twizzlers, Reese’s, Skittles, Twix, Air Heads, Butterfinger, Sour Patch Kids, Crunch, you name it. It wasn’t the best way for Pat to stay healthy for hockey, but on Halloween, it didn’t matter. We also bought some of our favorite horror movies since we didn’t really own any, and we agreed to have a scary movie marathon all day.
“We should start out with the less creepy movies and save the freakiest ones for later, when it’s actually dark out,” he suggested.
“Let’s watch Scream now then,” I said.
“What, you don’t think that movie’s scary?”
“I think it’s kind of funny, actually,” I smirked.
“Oh, I see. Well, I think The Grudge is pretty comical. Why don’t we watch that now?” he joked. I had made the mistake of mentioning that The Grudge series was, in my mind, the creepiest set of movies ever made. For some reason, they legitimately scared me, especially the third film. Because of that, Patrick had to buy all three, and we had to watch them on Halloween, of course. He was a jerk for that, but at least he wouldn’t let me sleep alone…right?
Scream was the first movie we watched, as suggested by me. Next was Silence of the Lambs. After that was Sinister, then both Insidious films, and the Grudge series was last. By the time we got to it, it was 9 pm and pitch black outside.
“Are you ready?” Patrick asked, his finger hovering over the play button on the remote.
“Yes, I’m ready. They’re just movies, Pat,” I told him, rolling my eyes.
“Exactly, they’re just movies.”
I did my best to act tough. I had seen all three of the movies before, and I remembered some of the jump scares, even. But, some of them still got me. Luckily, Patrick jumped too, so I didn’t feel like that much of a baby. Of course, he was holding me close pretty much the whole time, so that helped a little. It wasn’t until after our movie marathon was completely over at around two in the morning that I started to act scared.
“I don’t know why you said those movies creep you out so much. You seemed fine while we were watching them,” Patrick commented as we headed to our bedroom.
“Afterwards is always worse,” I answered.
“Oh. Well, are you tired, or do you want to stay up and watch some Netflix?” he wondered, pulling his shirt off.
“I was tired an hour ago, but not really anymore,” I admitted, my eyes on his bare upper body as I sat down on the bed.
“Me too. What do you want to watch?” he wondered.
“I don’t care. Just put something on.” He caught me looking at him and smirked. He picked a random show to have playing in the background and pinned me down on the bed. He kissed me hard and I tangled my fingers in his curly blonde hair. All was well until I swore I heard a sound that wasn’t the TV.
“What’s wrong?” Patrick asked breathlessly when I stopped kissing him.
“I heard something,” I explained. I saw a shadow on the wall that looked strangely humanoid and my heart stopped.
“I’m sure it was nothing, Lean.”
“Then what the hell is that?” I questioned him, pointing to the shadow on the wall. He looked at the shadow, then around the room.
“The lamp?” he guessed. He picked it up and sure enough, that was all it was. I felt relieved, but also embarrassed that I was so paranoid already.
“Wow, I’m an idiot,” I laughed.
“You’re not an idiot, you’re just paranoid. Don’t overthink things too much. If you hear or see something, it’s probably just nothing. All the freaky things we saw today were just in movies, remember that. Try to just focus on us right now,” he advised. I nodded. We got under the blankets and continued our make out session, which got heated after a couple minutes…literally. I pulled my shirt off and Patrick looked me over with lust in his eyes. He distracted me long enough for me to forget about all the movies, and eventually we fell asleep with the random Netflix show still on. To me, it had been a pretty decent Halloween.

Notes